Boy, did I hear it from everyone and his brother yesterday about my review of the season premiere of Curse of Oak Island. The majority of complaints revolved around the appearance of Zena Halpern on the program and her claims about having copies of medieval documents that connect the Knights Templar to Oak Island. Because I should not discuss was said to me privately, I would like to focus on the public issues that emerge from the claims she made on Curse of Oak Islan

​Analyzing and understanding the maps that Halpern claims are medieval is a matter of public concern. According to the Nielsen ratings for this week, The Curse of Oak Island drew 2.6 million viewers (down about two million from last season, against stiffer network and cable competition), and those 2.6 million viewers were led to believe that Halpern’s maps are worthy of investigation. Halpern agrees, happily appearing on the show and planning to release a book about the map in the near future. Clearly, Scott Wolter agrees as well: He took to his blog to post about Halpern’s map in light of Curse of Oak Island.

I want to briefly mention the obvious: While I believe the map to be a fake, I have no idea who would have fabricated it, or when, or why. Additionally, because there is no original medieval map, only alleged copies (possibly of still earlier copies), there is no way to scientifically analyze the documents to determine the age of the underlying map. The copy looks, at first glance, to be quite recent. The handwriting is inconsistent with the typical styles used prior to the late twentieth century. Note the semi-cursive style alternating with block print, inconsistent with the medieval style, and even most eighteenth or nineteenth century writing.

The problems with the map are still more numerous: It contains longitude, for example, half a millennium before Europeans learned to measure it accurately. The longitude lines are measured westward from Paris, as they were in the eighteenth century, while in the medieval period, as in ancient times, the prime meridian was typically assigned to the Canary Islands, the farthest western land then known. Longitude was measured in degrees east of the Canaries, the westernmost point. After exposure to Islamic geography, this meridian was recalculated as falling on the Cape Verde Islands, as we see in the works of Islamic geographers like Yaqut al-Hamani and Europeans like Roger Bacon. (The issue, at heart, was whether the Canaries or Cape Verde should the Fortunate Isles ancient geographers used to establish longitude.) All of this is inconsistent with the supposed 1179 Oak Island map.

What, then, is the reason to believe the map medieval? No one has provided any reason to suspect it is old, except for a touching faith that there is a mysterious original that no one has ever seen.

Such, though, is life. Without an original map, we have only a modern drawing that claims to represent a medieval map, but which is inconsistent with medieval maps. This is no way to “prove” a medieval voyage to America.

I also want to point out an extraordinary statement that the Message to Eagle website posted yesterday accusing another fringe history website of nefarious activities, from harassment to devil worship. Because these allegations came with no supporting evidence, I am not comfortable with repeating them here, but the gist of it was that Message to Eagle feels that the other site was engaging in cyberbullying, plagiarism, and other efforts to cause their site harm. Message to Eagle described the website whose owners have been harassing them as owned by a Greek and an Australian who currently live in South America, and whose site has a vast advertising network and a premium membership package. Only one major fringe history website matches that description, and it is Ancient Origins, run by Ioannis (John) Syrigos, of Greek origin, and the pseudonymous April Holloway, an Australian, both of whom currently live in Ecuador. I am aware of no evidence that the operators of the site in question worship Beelzebub or that they are engaged in any acts of psychological terror. Message to Eagle provided no evidence to support its claims. It does seem, however, that there is a feud brewing between two of the largest and most read fringe history sites.

I believe the different points of measurements as to the starting measurements of longitude were caused by each country choosing its own prime meridian. Spain used the Azores islands, Portugal the Cape Verde Islands, France used Paris, Britain used Greenwich etc. etc.
This was universally standardized in 1888 to Greenwich.
It is a mess really as Mercator seemed to first use the Canaries then later the Azores. Ptolemy supposedly used the Canary's but his maps corresponded to the Cape Verde Islands.
Yikes!
Bottom line is that there is no way the Knights Templar in 1178 had the means to accurately measure longitude.

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Only Me

11/18/2016 01:11:12 pm

Jim, OF COURSE the Templars knew of longitude! How else could they have passed it on to the Portuguese, who would form a joint venture with the Danes, to travel to North America and build a smokehouse that also met the requirements of a boundary marker for a treaty written over two decades later?

The evidence for this truth? Magnetite! It's so commonplace you just drill holes in rocks and scoop it out. Combine it with a bowl of water, a leaf and a needle and WALLA! Instant compass to measure magnetic declination with *precision*. I mean, who needs GPS, right?

The downside? After accomplishing all this, DON'T leave any records of it. At all. Instead, leave vague clues lying about in the hopes future generations will finally figure out how ahead of your time you really were.

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Kathleen

11/18/2016 01:21:02 pm

Only Me, of COURSE they passed it on to the Portuguese since they were already there, reconstituted as the Order of the Knights of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jim

11/18/2016 02:01:02 pm

C'mon you guys,,, Do you have any proof what so ever that the Templars didn't launch and use GPS satellites ? This map could be the smoking gun to prove just how advanced the Templars really were !!!

Jim

11/18/2016 02:06:35 pm

C'mon you guys,,, Do you have any proof what so ever that the Templars didn't launch and use GPS satellites ? This map could be the smoking gun to prove just how advanced the Templars really were !!!
Also has anyone considered that they may have had a magic sword in their possession that may have calculated longitude ?

Clint Knapp

11/18/2016 05:33:22 pm

I would like to postulate at this time that the fabled Black Prince/Knight satellite was in fact assembled and launched by the same time-traveling Freemasons who built the moon so their forerunners, the Knights Templar, could navigate to North America to claim it in the name of the Holy Bloodline - thereby paving the way for those same Freemasons to eventually lay claim to the entire continent as the home of their New World Order and its Mega-King: Hulk Hogan.

Prove me wrong.

Only Me

11/18/2016 12:46:25 pm

After reading that article from Message to Eagle, I have to say I didn't find it convincing. Maybe it was the poor writing or the nature of the accusations, but it definitely had a familiar ring to it. I guess I'm not used to seeing the fringe use the same tactics it deploys against sceptics on itself.

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Joe Scales

11/18/2016 01:16:11 pm

Wolter simply explains the Templars' use of longitude as being part and parcel to their "secret knowledge". Keyword "simply"...

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Americangro

11/20/2016 02:47:05 pm

I've done the longitude dance with Wolter and my conclusion is that he is so aggressively ignorant that my default assumption is no matter what he says it's almost certainly wrong.

What he refuses to understand about longitude is determining it depends on having a reliable clock that will keep time depenably under travel conditions. The Vikings and the Templars did not have such a clock. "But maybe...." NO, shut up Scott.

If there were a conspiracy operating against him I would definitely join it because he's such a whiny little baby.

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Doug Crowell

11/18/2016 01:22:28 pm

Hi Jason. I want to clarify another point made in this article, so that the critiques are assessing the information accurately. When we decided to look deeper into the intriguing suggestions presented in Mrs. Halpern's research, the concerns you outline above regarding the map mirrored our own. The date of 1179 on the map is likely indicative of the date of the alleged voyage, and not a the date upon which the map was created. Zena has not stated that the map was created in 1179AD, only that the details seen on the map were there when the copies of the maps came into her possession. Two dates have been given so far, 1179 and 1347, suggesting, within her research, continued visitation. These dates are within the generally accepted dates of Norse voyages. Until the show reveals more of the investigation into Zena's research, it can not be truly evaluated in proper context. I expect more detail to be revealed as the investigation unfolds in upcoming episodes. Thanks.

If the answer is that Halpern told "Oak Island" something different than she told Wolter from 2008 to 2013, then it doesn't do much to help her case. I could draw a map today, label it with medieval numbers and words and make the same case that it "proves" secret knowledge of whatever and is a copy of a copy of a copy. If it is not medieval, it is worthless since anyone could have back-formed it the same way Nicolo Zeno forged the Zeno map. The numbers are, of course, suspicious: 1347 is the date that the Norse from Greenland allegedly came across a party of sailors returning from "Markland" in America according to the Icelandic Annals, among the last Norse contacts with the New World.

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Joe Scales

11/18/2016 02:27:01 pm

Mr. Crowell,
Have you ever looked into the research done by Richard Joltes that can be found on website, Critical Enquiry?

http://www.criticalenquiry.org/oakisland/index.shtml

It is a shame that you'll never see those arguments based on actual fact displayed on the current television show.

Quite simply put, fringe profiteers who willingly poison the well of knowledge with their unqualified speculation posited as scholarly research shouldn't take offense when their work is not recognized by those bodies they attempt to impersonate. How do you wish your credibility to be judged? Unless of course you're earning an income from such questionable endeavors as related to an actual search for truth, an amateur in this regard only leaves doubt as to the breadth of their mental faculties.

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Tom

11/18/2016 01:22:50 pm

As Internationalists theTemplars would have used only Latin as French was far to mundane for the educated Priests of the Temple to use in correspondence etc
If using the route Europe, Iceland, Greenland and so on, surely they would have communicated with educated Nordic Catholic Priests and that would have been recorded by someone somewhere.
This period in history is well documented and a wandering troop of suspected heretics would have been noticed and reported.

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Jojo

11/18/2016 01:57:28 pm

What you said about the fixing of longitude is correct but there are many hints that this was done long before the seventeenth century. The Greeks and Egyptians had water clocks. The clepsydra of the Tower of the Winds of Athens was said to include a clepsydra or pressurized water clock. So relative accuracy in the fixing of longitude was possible. La Londe also speculated about accurate longitude being computed by using the moon, sun, and stars. Jefferson even discussed this in a letter. So while the practice was not common there was some tech that would have made this possible yet not as accurate as later w/ the advent of nautical clocks. In my reading I have also found that most info in this realm centers only on how mariners could compute this and not from a fixed point on land. Astronomy also also allows relative comparison of ephemeris to plot position. These new Oak Island maps remind me of some of the fakery surrounding the Rennes le Chateau mystery and how later people intentionally throw B.S. in the game to confuse the truth. There is no treasure at Oak Island and there is a wealth of historical evidence pointing to this. It is another Enochian mystery first arranged by the French inhabitants of Acadia and later expanded upon by their English Norman cousins. Pointing out period maps that are inaccurate does not prove that people could not fix longitude before the seventeenth century. Part of the problem with this was calculating the exact size and shape of the earth. If a map was drawn at a smaller scale that did not include vast distances relative accuracy was easier to obtain. Were these maps as accurate as Google Earth? No. But they did have some relative accuracy that made them valuable clues as to what was going on in the past. In addition much of this info was hidden and cloistered. Though this new OI info is questionable your assumption that men could not calculate longitude before the seventeenth century is wrong in my opinion.

They calculated longitude, but not as accurately as after the invention of the modern clock. Previously longitude was plagued with errors, and existing ancient and medieval charts giving the coordinates of cities (not maps drawn to a scale) demonstrate this. They simply give incorrect values due to error-prone calculations.

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Jojo

11/18/2016 08:05:20 pm

I agree. I am sometimes left wondering if some of them did know how to do it. Obviously if this was known it was difficult to calculate and may have been hidden information. In addition operator error, use of different scales, and sizes and shapes of the earth used made it difficult to share information. Anything close to today's accuracy was not obtained until the era you claim. I am only saying it is possible some could do this in the past. I suspect John Dee was capable of this but this is just during the era you suggest it could be done w/ relative accuracy.

Weatherwax

11/18/2016 04:28:54 pm

Water clocks can be exceptionally accurate on a stable platform, but will not be functional in any way on board a ship.

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Americanegro

11/20/2016 02:53:56 pm

"Part of the problem with this was calculating the exact size and shape of the earth." A problem solved by the ancient Greeks. Be smarter.

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Patrick

11/20/2016 05:47:51 pm

The Arabs re-confirmed it in the 9th century when they established a degree of latitude was equivalent to 56 2/3 Arabic miles [read folios 22b and 23a): http://cosmos.bodley.ox.ac.uk/hms/unilister.php?show=chapters&expand=732,814,&act=click_title_2#a2

SDO

11/18/2016 02:03:28 pm

Personally, I like Curse of Oak Island. This season, albeit 1 episode and 1 "Drilling Down" are so far the best (IMO) and most promising. I also personally love this blog and the work you do in pointing out issues / problems / falacies / etc with the various topics you cover. To become informed on any topic one needs to observe and review a variety of viewpoints. Being Canadian and having past experience with OI, my family visited it 40 or so years ago and as a kid I read a few stories, it is something that has some interest. I wouldn't say a fascination though, just a curiosity. Any adventure of this sort I find interesting. Although there is obviously some editing and promotion of various ideas I do not find it too outrageous and they seem willing to shutdown areas that prove to be wrong (roman sword for example). In comparison to Ancient Aliens, I find little similarity and would put the two shows into completely different categories. AA we watch purely for the (unintended) comedy.

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SDO

11/18/2016 02:08:01 pm

P.S. ...

Another show we do find similar in some respects is Expedition Unknown. Taken at face value, a travel / adventure / entertaining show as opposed to a true treasure hunt with humour thrown in makes it a reasonable show to invest our time in. We aren't expecting much from either EE or CoOI and they both deliver enough to keep us watching.

Ancient Aliens and Curse of Oak Island share the same production company, Prometheus Entertainment... and even the same announcer. Both fabricate history, distort truth and bury actual science. You may like the Oak Island show, and it is intended as entertainment along the staged, reality television genre, but I wouldn't consider that they will ever actually find anything "promising", given that the notion of treasure on Oak Island is, and has always been, a hoax.

Read here and see if the show still has anything to offer to you:

http://www.criticalenquiry.org/oakisland/index.shtml

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SDO

11/18/2016 02:53:19 pm

No worries. I have no aspirations of them finding anything substantial but I suspect that there may be some items there as there are in many locations up and down the coast and from years and decades of previous treasure seekers. It is fun to hope. As for being a hoax, I'm not convinced either way. Similarly, IF there was actually something there at some point there is no guarantee that it is still there. I'd be hesitant to make any definitive declaration. All I know for sure is that I am happy I'm not the one paying the bills! (I'm aware of the sword issue too as I've been reading Jason's blog for many years - but thanks I appreciate the clarification)

Joe Scales

11/18/2016 11:57:27 pm

There is no historical, archeological nor scientific basis for anything to have been hidden there. Period. Yes, there is an anecdotal source in the form of a not so uncommonly told tale that evolved over the years, but even that is wholly suspect when taken at face value. I mean... who buries the world's greatest treasure and then leaves a tackle block hanging over the dig site.

Joe Scales

11/18/2016 02:39:40 pm

Oh, and as for the sword story they shut down... the entire issue was portrayed to bait someone that had appeared on the show in the past and had burnt bridges attempting to profit from it in a most fraudulent manner. This suspect character took the bait thinking he'd get the scoop ahead of the production company, made too much of the sword on his own trying to see his wares and then was justly burnt for it when it was revealed to be no more than obvious fakery.

This wasn't the show playing fair. It was them playing dirty (and funny).

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Joe Scales

11/18/2016 02:52:56 pm

That should be "sell his wares" above, not see his wares... which is actually sort of funny, because I'm not sure anyone has seen them either.

DaveR

11/18/2016 02:21:43 pm

Without evidence supporting the existence of a medieval original map, the copies should be considered highly suspect. Claims the copies or made from the original, or from copies of the original, when being made by people having a vested interest in these maps being taken as authentic should also be suspect.

If I told you that I heard from my best friend that a girl he dated had a best friend who had a cousin that worked with a guy who used to work at Area 51, and he says they really do have an alien spacecraft in a warehouse, would you believe me? I can provide you with drawings made from original copies made from the original drawings made by the guy who worked at Area 51. Sadly, the originals were destroyed in a rather suspicion VW Beetle fire at the "Fat Boys" Drive-In located next to the former Brunswick Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine.

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SDO

11/18/2016 02:56:24 pm

I am a bit surprised that they don't show more of the authentication and validation process on the show. I'm sure that they must do *some* investigation before taking 3rd party stuff into consideration. They don't seem to be stupid people and / or willing to just throw their money away without some reason.

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Mike Morgan

11/18/2016 05:38:06 pm

"I'm sure that they must do *some* investigation before taking 3rd party stuff into consideration. They don't seem to be stupid people and / or willing to just throw their money away without some reason."

Well, they did pay $10,000 for the non-investigated fake sword .....

Joe Scales

11/19/2016 10:44:33 am

It's clear that the production company, Prometheus Entertainment, is calling the shots by bringing in their fringe rogues gallery; some of whom crossover from their other show, Ancient Aliens. Truth doesn't matter. Facts do not matter. Geology doesn't matter. Historical accuracy doesn't matter. You can't get around it. The Laginas are complicit in perpetrating a fraud by continuing this farce.

Kathleen

11/18/2016 02:27:53 pm

When mathematicians and astronomers throughout cultures and the centuries calculate the circumference of the earth, did they all divide it into 360°?

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Time Machine

11/18/2016 03:14:26 pm

COME ON KATHLEEN !!!

USE THIS SAME SORT OF COGNITION AND COMPREHENSION TOWARDS THE MYTH OF JESUS CHRIST !!!

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Time Machine

11/18/2016 03:17:37 pm

Question: What do you think about the Oak Island Myths?
Answer: They are a load of rubbish,

Question: What do you think about the resurrection of the dead?
Answer: Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour.

Kathleen

11/18/2016 03:26:18 pm

C'mon TM! You already know how I stand on Science and Faith. CCC159

And...do you know the answer to my actual question?

Time Machine

11/18/2016 03:28:56 pm

C'mon Kathleen, Hitler loved playing the role of chief rabbi in the synagogue.

Kathleen

11/18/2016 03:30:17 pm

You make me chuckle.

CCC159

11/18/2016 03:42:19 pm

"What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church? What have heretics to do with Christians? Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with all attempts to produce a Stoic, Platonic and dialectic Christianity!"

Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 7

Kathleen

11/18/2016 03:53:25 pm

What a lovely day. Have the leaves changed color where you live?

CCC159

11/18/2016 03:56:34 pm

"It is therefore better, as I have said, that one should have no knowledge whatever of of any one reason why a single thing in creation has been made, but should believe in God, and continue in his love, than that, puffed up through knowldege of this kind, he should fall away from that love which is the life of man; and that he should search after no other knowledge except the knowledge of Jesus Christ the Son of God, who was crucified for us, than that by subtle questions and hairsplitting expressions he should fall into impiety." Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses II.39.I.

Weatherwax

11/18/2016 04:41:41 pm

As much as you're always off topic and unhinged, you really seem to lose it when Kathleen posts.

Can't handle having women on the internet?

Uncle Ron

11/19/2016 04:41:34 pm

Now that we've had our daily dose of abject stupidity, could someone please answer Kathleen's question? I'd like to know too.

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Only Me

11/19/2016 06:50:17 pm

Kathleen, according to this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_(angle):

1) Some ancient calendars, like one used by the Persians, measured a year as 360 days. This was supposedly based on the observation the Sun advanced one degree each day.

2) The Babylonians used a sexagesimal numeric system that was later used by the Egyptians and Greeks. They also divided the circle into 360 parts in India.

3) The number 360 is readily divisible.

That was the best I could find. I guess I'm not using the right word search combination.

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Jim

11/19/2016 08:48:45 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude

"Ancient history

Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC first proposed a system of latitude and longitude for a map of the world. By the 2nd century BC Hipparchus was the first to use such a system to uniquely specify places on the earth. He also proposed a system of determining longitude by comparing the local time of a place with an absolute time. This is the first recognition that longitude can be determined by accurate knowledge of time. In the 11th century Al-Biruni believed the earth rotated on its axis and this forms our modern notion of how time and longitude are related.[1]"

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Time Machine

11/18/2016 03:15:36 pm

The Maccabees, that's historical reality.

The New Testament, that's fantasy,

Can't you tell ?

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Pete the Rocker

11/22/2016 10:25:41 am

Jesus didn't come to 'dispel' scripture,

He came to 'fulfill' scripture.

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David Bradbury

11/18/2016 03:20:11 pm

Needless to say, the map obeys most of the cardinal rules for a "hard to disprove" document. It doesn't claim to be the original, and it uses a very simple vocabulary (which itself, being mostly indistinguishable from modern French, can anyway be claimed to be a translation from the original language).
The longitude figures, of course, can only be the result of "secret Templar knowledge" but apart from that my main concern is the use of un-accented French. A lack of accents is not a problem in itself (indeed it would actually have been normal for medieval French), but a lack of the letters the accents replace is not a healthy sign. In particular, if accents are omitted, "deesse" should be something more like "diuesse".

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Time Machine

11/18/2016 03:27:28 pm

Hey, David Bradbury,

Jason Colavito keeps repeating Eugène Beauvois in relation to the discovery of America by the Templars.

But this does not apply to the Oak Island myths because they prefer the myth that America was discovered by the Templars by way of the Zeno Brothers and Prince Henry Sinclair,

Both Karen Ralls and Timothy Wallace Murphy rejected Eugène Beauvois LONG BEFORE Jason Colavito ever mentioned it on this Blog.

How does rejecting an idea mean that it didn't inspire the modern version? They reject Beauvois because he is the lineal ancestor of the claim and they wish to present themselves as distinct from it. He was the first to make it, and Frederick Pohl was familiar with him and used him in developing his Templar/Nova Scotia connection, which underlies the modern Oak Island claim.

Time Machine

11/18/2016 03:59:12 pm

>>>They reject Beauvois because he is the lineal ancestor of the claim and they wish to present themselves as distinct from it<<<

Similar thing, but he's pushed to the back burner by the believers in the Oak Island myths.

David Bradbury

11/18/2016 06:34:54 pm

- and yet here we are with a document allegedly dating from decades or centuries before Henry Sinclair, of which the "copy" we have is in French. Maybe it has been decided that the Sinclair claim is a dead-end.

Peter Geuzen

11/18/2016 05:35:57 pm

Given that mapgate has happened just in the first episode, let’s keep in mind there are at least 12 more episodes to happen. By the time the shows builds the drama to the grand finale in the last couple episodes, whatever happened in episode 1 may be dead and forgotten. This has been a pattern in the past. Who can even remember what happened in the first episode last year or the year before, or countless mid season episodes before the finale. What happened to Aztec guy and the Enochian chamber and the countless walks through the swamp, etc. etc. Dead ends come and go. Some just get ignored, some get debunked, and some get nuked to oblivion like the sword. Basically, this season started with most of everything done in the past, tossed aside. The same might happen to this map, or dare I speculate WILL happen to this map. Doug is under non-disclosure for the season. He is nonetheless trying to be as forthcoming as possible. His team do research for the island and this includes both hard science/engineering and humanities. He may have simply been asked to look at and interpret what the map says, not necessarily interpret what the map is in terms of real or fake. Maybe the longitude point will come out in the next show. The truth will be obvious if the things the map supposedly points to, turn out to be nothing. If they do turn out to be nothing then the credibility of the source is shot and the other stuff from her also gets tossed out as useless. By episode 3 they may simply be on to the next hook - tunnels to Atlantis or whatever.

Regardless of what the show does, Zena Halpern and Scott Wolter are both advocating for its authenticity in their books and, with Wolter, online.

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Peter Geuzen

11/18/2016 06:26:19 pm

I know, it's to be expected based on their motives. Wolter nonetheless notes provenance is sketchy. Whatever book she produces will be interesting to see. I expect nothing of substance honestly. I assume there will be no analysis of paper and ink, no expert scholarly interpretation on Templar content, no chain of custody other than fabricated, and no original source corroboration other than fabricated.

David Bradbury

11/18/2016 06:37:58 pm

Analysis of paper and ink would tell us very little of use anyway, given the prior acknowledgement that the map is a "copy".

Peter Geuzen

11/18/2016 07:06:56 pm

David - I'm referring to the original that Zena supposedly has which is the 1700s copy that Wolter mentions. I take it that there might not actually be an alleged original from 1179.

I just looked at the episode again to confirm that there are really two supposed maps with the second being the more detailed Oak Island specific map. These supposedly were grouped with the cipher document so it was all 3 things packaged together. Debunk one and toss them all.

David Bradbury

11/19/2016 06:01:23 am

"1700s copy" is, as I recall, pretty much the exact excuse that was used to explain the notorious "Zheng He" map:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zheng_He_map.jpg

Joe Scales

11/20/2016 12:04:51 am

And it's not even the first time out of work fringe theorists latched onto the Oak Island express.

John

11/18/2016 08:22:11 pm

Oak Island again... Holly cow!
Hell, if I could throw a load of dynamite on that island and erase it from the map ...
It's OK. Let's summarize this last post. Oak Island belongs to a bunch of charlatans who through decades of exploration, information and disinformation have become a kind of pilgrimage local of beginners in ancient history, cryptozoology, cryptoarcheology, archeology and lovers of ufology. If magic and mystery end the island's concessions, tourism, money and charlatans writing about the island will either change their profession or start taking the first step towards improbable mental and personal evolution.
But, as in religion, a temple or a sect can be dissolved or destroyed. But the temple or sect subsists within those who have been exiled and are now beyond the scope of the possibility of continuing to spread false and ridiculous stories. Slowly they will rebuild their beliefs. And maybe one day, when everyone has totally forgotten Oak Island and its curse, they will appear again with their beliefs and charlatans showing the mystery again.
Which makes me believe that we are certainly not offspring of the monkeys. They are not capable of making as many dumb things as the human beings are capable of doing obsessively, e.g., fall in the same hole several times.

The Spanish cartographer and explorer Juan de la Cosa sailed with Christopher Columbus. He created the first known cartographic representations showing both the Americas as well as Africa and Eurasia.

1502: Unknown Portuguese cartographer made the Cantino planisphere, the first nautical chart to implicitly represent latitudes.
1504: Portuguese cartographer Pedro Reinel made the oldest known nautical chart with a scale of latitudes.
1519 : Portuguese cartographers Lopo Homem, Pedro Reinel and Jorge Reinel made the group of maps known today as the Miller Atlas or Lopo Homem – Reinéis Atlas.
1530: Alonzo de Santa Cruz, Spanish cartographer, produced the first map of magnetic variations from true north. He believed it would be of use in finding the correct longitude. Santa Cruz also designed new nautical instruments,[65] and was interested in navigational methods.

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John

11/19/2016 01:21:12 am

What about Piri Reis? Showing Antartica (with animals, lakes, forests, e.g., and a lot more from ancient world maps with latitude and longitude?
"Although he was not an explorer and never sailed to the Atlantic, he compiled over twenty maps of Arab, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Indian and older Greek origins into a comprehensive representation of the known world of his era"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis

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Tom

11/19/2016 02:41:13 am

The Reiss map merely speculates the existence of a vast southern continent to balance the northern continents: it also omits most of the coastline of South America, since at the time it was produced that coastline had not yet been explored by the European adventurers.

John

11/19/2016 05:16:29 am

For sure you have no idea about what you speak Tom. Take a look in your precedent comment:

"As Internationalists theTemplars would have used only Latin as French was far to mundane for the educated Priests of the Temple to use in correspondence etc
If using the route Europe, Iceland, Greenland and so on, surely they would have communicated with educated Nordic Catholic Priests and that would have been recorded by someone somewhere.
This period in history is well documented and a wandering troop of suspected heretics would have been noticed and reported"

And looks like neither about Piri Reis. I'm sorry but looks like you have no serious comments to add.

Only Me

11/19/2016 05:31:39 am

John, here's a good article about the Piri Reis map:

http://www.badarchaeology.com/old-maps/the-piri-reis-map/

David Bradbury

11/19/2016 06:22:17 am

- and another one, with some neat illustrations:
https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/piriries.htm

"Antarctica" on the Piri Reis map is shown about 40 degrees south of the Equator, and treating it as a mis-oriented (perhaps necessarily so, given that if it followed the correct direction much further it would fall off the edge of the parchment) rendering of the southern part of the South American coast makes much more sense.

John

11/19/2016 06:38:32 am

Thank you "Only me" and David Bradbury. :)

GEE Torresso

11/19/2016 11:31:08 am

Good point made Jim

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Jim

11/19/2016 07:01:58 pm

These were the earliest maps made by the Spanish and Portuguese, and nary a mention of longitude being on any of them!

SDO

11/19/2016 09:07:57 am

Speculating on the "map" based on what was shown on TV is pointless. Looked like a photocopy or fax. It could have been traced from an original, a copy of a hand drawn copy with later translations added, or a number of other things. Similar to sword-gate, unless the original is provided and analysed there are too many questions. But as stated above, who knows. Maybe in episode 2 they abandon it.

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John

11/19/2016 09:08:55 am

David Bradbury's link about Piri Reis map looks like be more serious and true than any other document. The comments were pretty good too.
Piri Reis was debunked.
We still in the same place.
God bless you guys.

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John

11/19/2016 09:12:49 am

I'm sorry about what I said Tom.

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Tom

11/19/2016 09:44:39 am

Actually, I have a theory of how the Templars got to America without anybody seeing them on route.
Obviously they sailed only at night and hid up during the day.

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GEE Torresso

11/19/2016 11:32:50 am

Wow very interesting comments. This discussion has put another light on Episode 1 for me.

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Titus pullo

11/19/2016 05:10:40 pm

I'm not that knowledgable with regards to longitude calculation without an accurate clock that is portable and accurate fir a long period of time and in many cases can withstand a sea voyage accurately. Did the early explorers use dead reakoning? Or is there an astronomical method known before the 18th century?

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Jim

11/19/2016 06:34:14 pm

Titus, Some good info in wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_(navigation)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude

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Jim

11/20/2016 12:16:00 pm

Paris as the French prime meridian never came into use until 1667 !!! I wonder why the Templars used it in 1178 ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_meridian

"Origin

In the year 1634, France ruled by Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu decided that the Ferro meridian should be used as the reference on maps, since this island is the most western position of the Old World. It was also thought to be exactly 20 degrees west of Paris.

A French astronomer, Abbé Jean Picard, measured the length of a degree of latitude and computed from it the size of the Earth during 1669–1670. In 1666, Louis XIV of France had authorized the building of an observatory in Paris to measure longitude. On Midsummer's Day 1667, members of the Academy of Sciences traced the future building's outline on a plot outside town near the Port Royal abbey, with Picard's meridian exactly bisecting the site north-south. French cartographers would use it as their prime meridian for more than 200 years."

The fat lady is singing.

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JC

1/3/2017 08:34:44 am

Not only are you right on the map being a fake. Someone spent some money to make sure it went through the ringer alittle. You can see clearly that someone used modern ink when they traced an already known map. You can see that in the lines as they have little bleed and theres no splotching really. This only tells me a couple of things. One of them being the entire thing is a hoax by the McGinnis family and the second being they are trying to carry Oak Island in a new saga because Templars bring more money and the pirate stories are flat out lies.

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Hans

3/6/2018 03:21:46 am

Jason,
I just carefully examined the map and I can see numerous red flags.
Not just that it marks longitude. I think that’s a major problem, the secret knowledge of the Templars notwithstanding. To determine longitude the Templars needed a piece of hardware: an accurate chronometer. And they did not have that. But there are lots of other issues.
Starting in the upper part of the map, just below the southern tip of Newfoundland there are – in small letters – the words un and deux (upside down) and trois (right side up) written. That’s French, meaning one, two and three. Then below that just above the northern tip of Nova Scotia there is the word quatre (meaning four). Further to the left is cinq (meaning five) and six (meaning, you guessed it, six). So apparently the author of the map was numbering points along the coastline. And it appears that each of those points or clusters of points (in the case of un-deux- trois) is the intersection of one latitude line and one longitude line. Each of those intersection points apparently has a number.
You can easily see that the coastlines on the map are not represented in true relation to each other. For example both of the top two latitude lines represent a latitude of XLVII (= 47 deg) – one for points un-deux- trois and one for point quatre, which indeed are at the same latitude. The latitude line just below it represents a latitude of XLIX (= 49 deg) – for point six - and should be quite a distance higher than the latitude lines above it. Similarly the longitude line through un-deux-trois represents a longitude of LVIII,XX (= 58 deg 20 min), far too close to the next longitude line which represents a longitude of LXIII,L (= 63 deg 50 min). So therefore what we have here is not really a map, but a sketch of different coastlines where a sailor marked and numbered specific points of interest with exact latitude and longitude. I could see how that could be useful for somebody to navigate a ship into the Gulf of St Lawrence, for example.
But it is definitely not something an original mapmaker would create. Rather the sailor would transfer the coastline from a preexisting map to a sketch and then annotate that.
Let’s turn our attention to the lower part of the map where Nova Scotia is depicted in two pieces. First the north-eastern piece and below it the south-western piece (the “continuation”). On the south-western piece we too have latitude and longitude lines but the intersection points are not numbered. Why not? I would expect sept and huit here if the author of the map were really interested in these points enough to mark them with latitude and longitude. Also the lines look shorter; they are not extended all the way to the edge of the paper. As if the lower part of the map was drawn by somebody different.
There is one longitude line (LXIII,L) that starts at the top, goes through point quatre, but then when it hits the outline of south-western Nova Scotia it stops, only to resume below it. Why so? I could see the author of the map to stop the longitude line when it hits south-western Nova Scotia because that line only pertains to north-eastern Nova Scotia (point quatre). But then why resume drawing it again at the bottom? It looks as if the longitude line was drawn first and then south-western Nova Scotia was added to the map later, obscuring the line.
Now let’s look at the latitude and longitude values themselves. I found that the values for points un-deux-trois, quatre, and cinq (which represents the eastern tip of Prince Edward Island) are reasonably accurate - assuming longitude relative to the meridian of Paris (subtract 2 deg 20 min from the longitude values on the map to get moderns longitudes). I was not able to determine what point six designates, but it seems to be a point along the mouth of the St Lawrence River. However the latitude and longitude values for the intersection points in the outline of south-western Nova Scotia, in the lower part of the map, are more problematic.
The point that presumably represents Oak Island is marked at a latitude of XLVI,XLVII (= 46 deg 47 min). It seems odd already that the value is specified down to the minute when in the upper part of the map only degrees are specified, no minutes for latitudes. Worse, the value is off by about 2 deg and 20 min. Ugh – did the author accidentally add the Paris longitude offset to a latitude value? If so that would be a clear indication of fraud. Also note that the latitude line above it, which represents a latitude of XLV, XV (= 45 deg 15 min) – should really be drawn below the latitude line through Oak Island; the error is quite obvious.
The longitude line through Oak Island is reasonably accurate but the longitude line to its right, which represents a longitude of LXIII, LVII (= 63 deg 57 min) is way off. It should not even be on this part of the map as it falls within the north-eastern part (not the south-we

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.